Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 6, 1912)
The Omaha Sunday Bee Magazine-Pace- ' ' t-ti , - T. mi I . , ,fir,Tf. r .ifTirmnriin-li , m fri 8 n H l ! rpnni n nil u I I I II 1111 II II II II H r - ' - . ' B'fl K B S m M mm Mm I I E a ' M 'an B a . W, a 1 9 1(13 B Ifl 11 hi & if a a - - & a a II fill 1113 II II i I V f I IWI i 1 II If J ' , . . .,. . - . Copyright, U1J, by the' Stsw Company. Great Britain Right Res TveL ' 9 iftlfifl I il Lav ' L-J L ,J Li V r i ii . i v ii i . i ii i. r . J A Ill-Natured Cartoon by Oavroche, the Famous French Car toonist, Based on Dr. Forbes Ross's Address, Which Has Aroused Scornful Amusement in England. ity It seema to prefer-to starve, for though greedy to fill its social stomach with liquid food when ever, there is an opportunity, it dispenses this store most gener ously to the larvae and its sister ants and permits very little of it to pass the valve into the in dividual , stomach, only enough, in fact, to maintain healthful activity. "Ants are, therefore, the most" thoroughgoing of communists, to : whom" Individual possession as such has no meaning beyond ! ' t ! i Dr. Forbes Ross, Disth 'tauished Scientist, Pictures His Overtaxed Countrymen Reverting to a Prim itive Simian Type with the Food- Grabhina Instinct Prednminnnt "Ants are, therefore, the most thorough going of communists, to whom individual possession as such has no meaning beyond -its benefit to the community as a whole. ; "But even the worker's sterility, which' has given certain individualistic thinkers such bad dreams, is neither fixed nor irre vocable. If the colony has a very abund- - ant food supply, or if its queen dies, the small, undeveloped eggs which are always , present in the ovaries of the worker, may grow to full size, be deposited and devel oped normally, though alwayB or nearly always into male ants, because they are not fertilized.' Thus the Joys of maternity may fall to the lot of the worker, though less abundantly and less frequently than to that of the queen." Observation by naturalists among the mammais indicate tnat u man aegneratea through the narrowing of the means of subsistence, he would revert to some earlier type In the history of the race. Mongrel dogs, ill kept and not trained to do certain things like the best breeds, revert to something like the wild dog of the African forest ' Evolution teaches us that man was evolved from a creature rkin to the apen, who vanished from the earth countless ages ago. Toward this type the English scientist argues that his race is reverting. The Scientist's Strange Prophecy By Dr. Forbes Ross. THE average Englishman's face in two thousand years will be that of a typical criminal. It will be a typical criminal face because the tendency of nature is to Improve, but the tendency of modern methods is the reverse. The reasons for this fore cast are, firstly the tendency of the bet ter classes to curtail their numbers; second, the tendency of the more dissolute and less intelligent to mul- the present day cannot keep pace with the fearful stress of taxation and other bur dens which are being thrown upon its shoulders. It is being replaced by a mix ture of, sheep and wild beasts. ( There is a distinction between the man who Is made a criminal by legislation and the man with the criminal instincts. The man who is made criminal by law may be one who Is really angelic but-weak. What I mean by a criminal is a man of the gorilla type, utterly ruthless, without soul or conscience, a man who would commit murder for a meal. But a man of weak type, a man witn a receding chin, Instead of being called a criminal and being tried H Mr WILL the Englishman of 2,000 years from now look like' a depraved rnrtllif M . Doctor Forbes Ross, a distinguished Eng . lish physician and scientist; has predicted that he will This prediction couched in remarkably picturesque and entertaining . language was recently made before a scientific London audience. It has aroused widespread interest and not a little amuse ment, The most Interesting passages from this entertaining address are printed elsewhere on this page. The basic idea of Dr. Ross's address is -that owing to the stress of taxation, the lack of food and the material difficulties of existence, only the most animal type . of Englishman will ' be able to survive. There will be no room, no means of - subsistence for the higher type of man, the Inheritor of culture and civilization, , who requires abundant means and favor able surroundings for the development 1 of his powers. The survivor will be a man who needs only food and none of the higher things. : He will be an animal who possesses the , greatest ability to grab his food quickly, and is not at all particular about its qual ; ity. , In Dr. Ross's werds he will be a "creature of primordial qualities and primitive instincts." That means that he must be of the gorilloid type. Some nervous Englishmen are now pic turing their descendants as a lot of ape like creatures . sitting in the ruins of Westminster Abbey and listening to a large ape dancing and howling in place of the, impressive services that are now held in that historic shrine. The enter tainment enjoyed by these creatureB would resemble the beating upon a drum like cake of earth, that is now said to give pleasure to small parties of African gorillas. Doctor Ross has a' well-established scien tific reputation, but his address must be regarded as containing large elements of sarcasm and exaggeration; his reference to the taxation policy of the present Gov ernment as leading to the- degeneration of the race is evidently & violent and un scientific exhibition of political feeling. It is not from the extinction of the upper . social classes that England Is most in , danger of degenerating. The intelligent skilled workman is as high a type of civil. ization as any.: The failure of the means of subsistence must tend to the extinction of that type of wprkingman and his re placement by a more primitive creature. In predicting that .the failure of the means of subsistence, the harder condl- " tlons of the struggle for life may lead to a degeneration of the race, .Dr. Ross is following well established sclentiiic prin ciples. There are many cases of animal genera which have suffered extinction or ' have undergone profound modification as the result of the failure of the food supply. Many races of mankind have -certainly suffered extensive changes and degenera tion from the same cause. The absolutely ' barbarous and ignorant natives who now linger In Yucatan are descendants of the Mayas, who once covered Mexico with splendid temples and cities. Their de generation is attributed partly to the fail ure of the water and food supply. V The most interesting instance of the change, in an animal race owing to lack of food Is to be-found in the white ants known as termites. William Morton ' Wheeler, Ph.D., professor of Economic Entomology in Harvard University, deals with this point in the course of a long and very interesting article called "Notes " About Ants and " Their Resemblance to Man" in the National Geographic Maga zine. M " M ' Professor Morton says In his introduc tory remarks that the ants have solved all the economic and political problems which man has to encounter. Hence It Is not surprising that they should help us to understand why Englishmen may change Into gorillas as the result of inability to make a good living. , , We must remember that a hard but successful truggle; for a living raises us la the scale of evolution, but an unsuc cessful one makes us degenerate. Now the white ants change a certain , proportion of their population Into sexless workers, according to the food supply. The less food there is the more of these workers there are. , They are dreary, Joy less creatures, underfed, having just suf ficient strength to drag them to their : work...- .: ; True, to become a honeless workoi- not the same thing as hecomlnir a eorilla. but the case of the ants, does show how the food question may modify a race, and it is the food question which, according to Doctor Forbes Ross, is going to modify Engli'hmen. "The white ant queen," says Professor Wheeler of Harvard, "lays a small batch of eggs and cares for them till they hatch as helpless, grub-like larvae. These she feeds with her' saliva, but as the supply of this is meagre, the larvae grow slowly, pupate prematurely, and emerge as very small and feeble workers. They neverthe less at once set tq, work to expand the colony by opening up a gallery to the out side world and go forth to forage. They bring in food to their starving mother and - henceforth, spend their days In foraging, enlarging the nest by excavating addi tional galleries and chambers, and in rear Ing the successive broods of larvae from the eggs which the queen la now able to produce la quantities. "The larvae are fed more abundantly as the numbers of workert Increase, and, therefore, develop into larger and more vigorous individuals. As time goes on and at the proper season, male larvae appear and develop, and the female larvae are so well fed that they can develop beyond the worker Btage and become queens. "With the appearance of these sexual forms the colony has reached maturity, and although it may persist for many years It merely repeats each . year this same cycle of feeding and rearing aa great a number of Individuals as possible on the amount of foo dwhich the workers can secure. "The que.en may live a dozen years or more, and each worker may live three or four years, but the males usually live only a few weexs and die alter the nuptial flight, being ex hausted and knowing neither how to feed themselves nor how to return to the nest. "Most extraordinary during the development of the ant colony is the behavior of the work ers, lor though sterile and under ordinary cir cumstances,, unable to lay eggs, they neverthe- ess exhibit all the other maternal instincts , in an exaggerated ' gree. The worker. we have seen, is a form produced by Inadequate nourishment It Is a hunger form so inured to long fasting during its larval life that even when it reaches matur- -m3.-X ..A MM 3 irw 2 -I MHm Ail cj i uvw.. ill mm rrv mv unit i The Ancestors of Man Just Before We Assumed the Distinctly Human cu n- k.. u l.: c n a weak teeth, small eyes, short neck, head set welt back between the shoulders and a depraved gorilla countenance. The nation is being propogated mainly by those who retain their primordial qual ities and primitive instincts. There fore, we must go back to the gorlla type of humanity. The better class of tlply out of all proper proportion. The r as a criminal should be tried as face of the average Englishman will character. be that of a typical, criminal with During some time of its exlston the prognathous Jaws, receding forehead, l human being goes through all the phases broad, fiat nose, well marked canine of animal creation. First he is a mass of protoplasm; KeTS HU1 En.H.hman, Who 50,000 Yea, A8o, Show then he is little hatter a sea anemone;, then he Is practically a fish with gill clefts; then a chicken; then he assumes mammalian form with Simian outlines and a long tail; then the tail gradually leaves him and at birth we have a human being. There is a decided resemblance between the human face and that of many animals. There is a bird like face, a sheeplike face, a cowlike face, a horselike face and a Simian face. The human face is, therefore, a composite of all other faces below man In creation, but the human face is an advance on the face of the gorilla. The lower animals have large Jawbones uppV and lower, that project a great distance beyond their eyes and, therefore, beyond their brain but when we reach man, we find that forehead, eyebrows. Jaws and chin are all In the same perpendicular line The only feature of the face projecting beyond that line In a typical cultured human face is the nose. The eyes and nose of man- kmLr,e vquite correcUy Placed because mankind has assumed an erect position. The eyes look forward because man, un like the crab, is a creature that progresses In a forward direction. Man 'and toe Ses are the only living creatures w70 can r keep their face forward when Iookine aside. The horse, sheep and cow w toturn their heads round to look at an? The degenerate man of the future will keep his eyes in the same position be cause that will enable him to catch It food most effectively, but th? noble pendicular line of forehead and chin Will be replaced by the receding forehead and projecting jaw of a gorilloid creature.